The 31K word cut

28 June 2011 06:24

I’m taking a small break from revising Revenant Rising to do some work on its sequel. I started this year with a writing resolution to write 5000 words each week, only to abandon it two months later when I found the story was suffering from my murderous pace.

I had this problem with Revenant Rising as well. I usually start my writing with a sprint in which I really get to know my main characters, but totally botch the pacing. With Revenant Rising this happened after about 15K words. Due to the enormous pace I had with its sequel, it happened much later.

So what is my next step? With Revenant Rising I kept about half of what I’d written (I only recently rewrote that part), but right now I’m seriously wondering if I should keep any of the stuff I’ve written for the sequel. I’m doing some massive plotting right now, in a far grander scale than I did for Revenant Rising. If I do decide to throw away the draft and start over, it will be my biggest cut ever.

I want to finish this sequel in considerably less time than it took for me to write Revenant Rising, but to do so I need to avoid� getting stuck. I’m hoping Alexandra Sokoloff’s [s=digital-textqid=1263036048sr=1-1]Screenwriting Tricks for Authors](http://www.amazon.com/Screenwriting-Tricks-Authors-Screenwriters-ebook/dp/B0032JSJ9U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8[#amp) can help me out in this� regard, though I’m using plenty of techniques I figured out for myself.

One of the tricks this book introduces is using movies with similar themes to determine story structures. I can use your advice in this regard. I’m looking for movies about:

Persons with amnesia who gradually rediscover who they are, to their horror

Persons who are plagued by a tarnished reputation caused by an ancestor, trying to redeem their families